Weeks 5, 6, 7: Races, Boat, Trailride, and Job

So I've been quite negligent to my blog-writing duties. I guess I haven't been in the mood for writing anything. A lot has happened since I last wrote, so I'll try to be brief--or at least concise.

The first outstanding event that I can't remember writing about was going to the horse races... two Saturdays ago. Wow, I've been putting this off a lot longer than I thought. It was a big day at the races and the weather was nice, so I took off from Unilodge and caught the short 10-15 minute train it took to get to the racecourse. I was there from about 12:30 to 4:30 or so, and saw most of the days races in between wandering around the grounds and taking pictures. The main attraction was the Lexus Newmarket Handicap, a big G1 race with a million dollar purse. Black Caviar, a sprinting filly who was undefeated for her first 9 starts, was going for her tenth victory. Before the race you could collect any number of free black caviar souvenirs. I scavenged up two little flags, a hat, and some pins, all made with the orange/pink and black silk colors. She ended up winning the race seemingly effortlessly, it was pretty impressive. I even scored a coveted fence-side position to take some sick pictures of her in the winners circle-thing. They handed out free prints of her crossing the wire a couple hours after the race. My other favorite part of the afternoon was the free 'how to use one of those confusing betting machine' lessons I got from a nice gentleman that even spotted me 5 dollars to bet--too bad my horse lost by a nose.

That night I made another mad dash across the city to catch a train out to Woodend. I have an uncanny ability to hop on the train a minute before it's about to leave. I always mean to plan ahead and give myself enough time to warrant a casual pace, but things always come up and I end up being one of those annoying people weaving through the standing people on escalators. But, back to the story, Michael had invited me to a get together at Jay's house that night, and he was even nice enough to pick me up and drop me off from the train station. Elisa had plans for the day and wasn't able to come by until late, but I had a great time hanging out with Michael and everyone else there. The next afternoon Michael dropped me back at the train station to head back to the city.

Last Sunday night was loads of fun. I'd bought tickets a few weeks ago for a dubstep boat cruise with some of the people in unilodge. It turned out to be a bigger group than I thought, about 16 people, that all loaded into taxis to find our boat in the docklands. We got to spend the next 4 hours cruising back and forth through the industrial dock lands, under massive bridges, and out in some open water across from the city skyline, all with beautifully blasting dubstep. The cruise in itself was great, going through the docklands with all of the massive shipping freighters with giant railroad cars being unloaded off of them all throughout the evening was really neat to see. It was a long night of lots of dancing, general deafening from the dubstep, and good times with a lot of unilodge people. We took the free party bus back into the city, rocking back and forth to the music and dancing all the way, to the afterparty at Miss Libs, a bar not far from unilodge. We spent a little while hanging out there and then went home to retire.

The next fun outing was Tuesday night, back to Miss Libs, actually. Some of the guys from unilodge are in a band that was performing there. It was pretty crazy, seeing most of the outside courtyard/music performance half of the bar completely filled with unilodgers. There were other people there, but it was hard to find them amongst the sea. I think someone said they counted at least 36 known occupants of unilodge. The music was good, the guys are amazing good guitar players, and the singing wasn't too bad.

Wednesday was a good day. My australian wildlife class lab was at the Melbourne zoo. We had to walk there, which took about 20 minutes, and then spent the next three hours wandering around in it. The work we are given to do while we are there is really rather simple and not necessary to do while actually on the trip. We get a couple page worksheet with questions that are more google-able than actually findable at the zoo. Otherwise, we had to fill 3-4 pages with sketches and notes, on basically anything that interested us. Unfortunately, the assignment was focused on the reptiles, lizards, frogs, and oddly seals, so I didn't get to explore the whole zoo, just those areas. At least it was free entry, and now I've got that half done for when I go back.

I walked back with an american who started talking to me after recognizing my Penn State bag, and a nice Australian guy who was telling us about his length travels he takes for competitive fencing. I got back around 5:30, and was welcomed to the site of unilodge setting up for their little party they were putting on. It was themed liked a 5 year olds birthday party, there were balloons, little carnival games, and even a clown doing magic tricks. The best part, though, was the free food. They were grilling sausage/hot dog things, that you would eat on a slice of plain bread with fried onions and your choice of condiments. I think I had 3, maybe 4, a couple bags of popcorn, a bag of cotton candy, and however many cokes it took to wash it all down. Oh, and I won a pack of unilodge jelly beans playing one of the semi-unbeatable games. On the whole, it was rather successful, though gluttony is a bit painful.

The rest of the week was relatively uneventful, from what I can remember. This past Saturday afternoon I took a train out to Elisa's. I missed the Woodend stop, for some reason unknown to me, and ended up in the next town, Kyneton. I had to wait 20 minutes or so for Elisa to drive out to pick me up, but I spent some time exploring the deserted station and tracks. We went back to Elisa's, had a few minutes to chill, and then headed down the road to her friend's house for the evening. Her best friend from middle/high school, Myvy, and her family were making a big dinner.It was a pretty big bunch: us, Myvy, (different) Jess and Rachel (two friends from highschool), Myvy's parents and twin brothers, and an Austrian couple that had been traveling the country and were staying at their house. The food was amazing, I must say. For starters we had crackers and cheese and home made dips of some sort with champagne with strawberries in the glasses. So tasty. Then some ridiculously good lasagna with salads for dinner with some really sweet white wine, Moscato I think it was called. Then we all played scategories for a while and then had desert called "lemon delicious." It's some kind of cake/puddingy/lemon stuff with ice cream. After dinner we all sat around and talked for a while. Jess, the resident 'hippie' who is an Outdoor Education major, told us about trips hiking or kayaking or whatnot inbetween Rachel and I's long, drawn out conversations on horses--owns her own horse, and works at one of the farms nearbye. I feel like we need to hang out. Meanwhile, Myvy, going to school to be a physical therapist' was taking turns palpating Jess and Rachel's back to feel their spinal processes. It was a fun evening. 

Sunday was nice. We woke up around 8:40 and were out of the house picking everyone up by 9. My plan for Jess and I to go riding had grown to include her boyfriend Aaron, Elisa, and Michael. We were given our horses, mounted up, and headed out. The riding was a bit mundane for a while. The first half, maybe three quarters of the ride was spent just sitting ontop of my trusty mare, Alabama (I would get the one named after a US state), while she boredly followed the rest of the horses along a beaten trail through some woods and hills. It was nice, relaxing, but generally annoying to not really be riding--though to be fair though I was rather impressed at how well trained, or how docile and complacent  they were. Luckily, I caught a break when we were allowed to break into groups based on experience to speed things up a little. I went with one of the girls who worked there to canter around. It was rather simple, still, since 'Bama seemed to pick up whatever pace the horse infront of her was going, so I didn't even have to coax her into a trot or canter, she just took off. I had a blast, though, cantering about through trails around the property, ducking through bushes and trees. My mare wasn't the smoothest ride, but being sore was so worth it. 

After riding we drove into town to go to the Daylesford market. It was alright, but the Gisborne market that I I went to a few weeks ago was generally a lot nicer, with most of the stands being artists or crafstmen selling their work, whereas Daylesford was mostly just a bunch of people selling random things and old stuff. Elisa, Michael, and I lapped Jess and Aaron a few times (they were much more thorough shoppers) until we caved and left to find lunch. It took a lot of searching to finally find somewhere we wanted to eat. Michael and I each got chicken parms, costing a whopping 19 dollars. I bitched about how expensive food was for most of the meal. Elisa left for a while to go pick up the other two, and Michael and I had a lovely chat--mostly about how expensive the food was. After lunch we headed home. We dropped Michael off and went and hung out at Aaron's house for a while. We watched some big bang and snacked on candy we bought at the market. 

We went back to Elisa's around 5 and were both exaughsted. I took a shower and then we both went back and forth between napping and reading until dinner at 6:30 or so. I borrowed a book from Nancy's shelf, since she has a lovely collection of fantasty books, so I'd have something to keep me busy on the trains since I just finished my other book. Dinner was great, as always. There was some kind of meat, possibly lamb again,  then green beans and broccoli and a whopping mound of mashed potatoes. I didn't really care about the rest of the food, though it was good, but I've been craving mashed potatoes all week for some reason. I was so happy. I spent some time hanging out with her family downstairs watching tv after dinner. Her mom made some really tasty desert, creme brule or something? I'm not sure, but it was lovely. I ate so well that weekend, especially compared to the past week where I ate mostly ramen and similar quality food. I caught the last train home for the night. 

Monday was spent mostly in a state of severe soreness from riding the day before. I decided to take it easy and read most of the day. I did receive a call though, from one of the few places I'd applied to in my feeble job search. Tuesday morning I woke up super early and went on my grand adventure to find Chadstone. It takes about an hour to get there, which is really obnoxious. First, a tram ride to the train station, then a train, and then a bus to the mall where the company is located. It was a simple group interview that involved answering one or two questions and reading off a script, basically all the job requires being able to read, speak, work a computer, and be desperate enough to want to work there. I got a call back Tuesday afternoon and was signed up for training for today. The training was about as painful as the commute, and lasted from 11 to 3 today. We spent most of our time practicing reading out and coding in the answers to the endless surveys we have to do for market research. Yeah, I'm going to be one of those annoying phone interviewers. Some of the exciting 10-20 minute long surveys I got to read and reread at nausium today were about road safety, an energy company and electric rates, the housing market etc. The only way I made it through was knowing that I was getting paid $80 to sit there. So, despite the commute, and the job itself, the $20 an hour paycheck is far too tempting to pass up. I've never made that much money in my life, but around here, its only barely above minimum wage. I have my first shift tomorrow night, so I guess I'll found out how worth it is really is. 

I accidentally finished the book I borrowed from Nancy yesterday, I thought 700 pages might last me a little longer than two days. Guess not, but now I don't have anything to read, so it's going to be a long commute tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to this weekend though, I've booked a day ride in the high country mountains, about 3 hours from here, on Sunday. I'm going to be in so much pain on Monday, but I can't wait. So that was my last two weeks or so. Stay tuned for more. 

Weekend of 4th week: Open Range Zoo and Macedon Waterfall

So the weekend turned out to be a success. Saturday morning I woke up early to catch the 10:30 train out to Elisa's. As always, no matter how much time I've given myself to get there, I always end up getting onto the train with only a minute or two to spare before it's pulling out of the station. Ah well, at least I've stopped missing them. I've started remembering to bring along a book to read, so the hour long train ride out to Woodend goes by quickly. Elisa picked me up at the station at 11:30 and we hung left her place at noon once Michael arrived. 

We had a nice hour long drive to get to our destination for the day: Werribee Open Range Zoo. There was a pitstop on the way there to get some lunch--such a tasty Big Mac. Luckily, the weather was perfect for the day, not a cloud in the sky and probably in the mid 70s in the sun. Once we got to the zoo, we payed our admissions, only 22 dollars, and were automatically signed up to go on a 2:35 safari ride. With 20 minutes to spare, we decided to go walk through the open range bit, where they have Australian animals like kangaroos and emus wandering about the large enclosure. On our short walk we quickly discovered that all of the animals were far off the path, hiding under the trees for some reprieve from the sun. Fortunately, I was taught that if it's not roped off, I can climb it (or in this case trek across is), so we went to pester some lazy kangarros. We also discovered Elisa's fear of emus, which were admittedly rather intimidating looking and seemed to hover in small groups around the kangaroos. We found a bunch of lounging kangaroos (surrounded by emus), but before we had time to chase them out so I could see them hop about, we realized we needed to catch our sarafri bus so we headed back to the center of the zoo. 

By some miracle, Elisa, Michael, and I got an entire bench of the otherwise packed bus; every other row had 5 occupants, with children under 10 seeming to be the majority. The safari took us across the world!, as the drive would exclaim every time we went into a new encloser. "And now we've crossed into North America!" meanwhile I'm exclaiming the speediness of our travel--that was nothing like my 14 hour flight across the Pacific! Anyways, we got to see a lot of cool, lazy animals in the first few zones like buffalo, some gazel-like things, camels, hippos, and so on. Elisa and I took turns passing my camera off depending on which side of the bus was closest to the animals. The African Safari (also only a hop skip and dive away from Australia apparently) was the coolest place. There was a small herd of giraffes, rhinos, zebras, and more deer like things, all up right next to the bus at most times since the hay truck had just come through, causing them all to gather nicely for a group photo. Further up the road was a herd of zebra with a foal only two weeks old. It was soo cute. 

The safari took about 45 minutes and was really nice, overall. Though, at one point the ~3 year old girl behind me kept signing lyrics from "In the Ayer," which kind of made me wonder what kids are learning these days. After the safari we had a brief drink break, which included playing with the cute meercats whose exhibit lined the cafe. We decided to walk around the rest of the zoo before returning to pester more kangaroos. There were lazy lions, wild dogs that were eating lunch, cheetas that kept pacing inches away, separated only by s thin piece of glass, and hippos getting their teeth checked. Once we finished the loop it was back to open range section. 

I was disapointed to find that herd of lazy kangaroos we'd found earlier were no where to be seen. Michael and I tried to see how close we could dare get to some emus, much to Elisa's discomfort. I kept saying that I was going to get a great picture, of Michael chasing the kangarros, hopping after the emus, who were chasing Elisa. Would have been great. On our way out, we happened across two kangaroos right near the path. I stood there, poised to take a picture of them hopping about, but instead they either collapsed into the grass for a nap or sheepishly dragged their feet around on the group to only mimic the motion of hopping. Determined to get a picture of them hopping around, we tried to wait until all the other guests weren't around  so Michael could scare them and make them hop. The whole time new families pushing strollers and running after children kept on passing, the two kangaroos continued to do absolutely nothing. After about 10 minutes my camera battery suddenly died. Luckily, I had the backup in my purse. I was in the middle of changing it when for no particular reason, both kangaroos get up and hop dramatically off. Of course, all in the 10 seconds that it took for me to change the battery. Damn kangaroos. 

After having spent a couple hours out in the sun at the zoo, we left and drove the hour back to Elisa's house. We went into town to rent movies and get pizza for the evening. We rented Easy A, at Nancy's request, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, for her brother and his friends, and Going the Distance, because it was the first thing Elisa grabbed after a long period of indecision. Getting pizza took longer than it should have, so I spent about 10 minutes sitting in the car while Elisa and Michael waited inside. Most of the time was spent being entertained by a lone fly trapped in the car with me. Otherwise, I'd started flipping through Elisa's roadmap of Victoria, looking for funny named towns--and let me tell you, there were a lot. I decided next time Elisa and I need an idea on where to go, we're going to go to the funniest named town I can find. Finally, we retired to Elisa's house for the evening. We ended up watching all three movies, leaving us getting ready for bed around 1am or so. While "helping" Michael and Elisa get mattresses out of her guest house, I was quickly distracted by the stars. I hadn't been outside on a clear night in the country yet, but woah, the stars here are beautiful. There seemed to be hundreds more than I'd ever seen before, and even brighter than that. I just stood outside for 5 minutes, spinning in circles trying to look at all of them. 

The day we slept in, and didn't start thinking about what to do until after 11 or so. Her Mom suggested the Gibson market that is put on on the first Sunday of each month. It was only a 15 minute or so drive to Gibson. It was a nice sized town, another beautiful sunny day, and the market was very cute. There were loads of tents lining the center of town with people selling food, flowers, arts and crafts, word work, jewelry, books etc. We walked around for a long time, looking through all of the stands. After we'd finished with the market we found a little cafe and sat out on the street for lunch. I got the chicken parm, or parmagana, special for lunch. It ended up being huge, and delicious, and oddly enough they serve chicken parm ontop of french fries. Such a good choice. After spending a couple hours in Gibson we headed back to Woodend to run a few errands. After we'd dropped off the groceries at Elisa's, we decided to go find a waterfall we'd heard about that was nearbye. 

We drove up and over Mt. Macedon again, over a crazy windy dirt road that wove through a forest of black trees, mostly burnt by a wildfire long ago. Wildfires here are rather common, large ones happen every 3 years or so in some places, and everyone is extremely fire-safe. There are signs along the road indicting the fire risk level of the day, and at gas stations you're not allowed to even operate a cell phone, in case there's a spark I guess. On the other side of the mountain, we found the Stanley park, a little park that appeared to be a little clearing of grass, a gazebo, and a playgroup with a few families there. As soon as you dipped into the little trail in the woods along the field there was a little stream, and then suddenly a waterfall. It wasn't nearly as large as Trentham Falls, but it was still impressive. We walked down the nicely crafted stone steps to the base of the waterfall. I had loads of fun climbing around on the rocks and taking pictures. 

After getting my fill on the falls, we followed the trail that wound alongside the steam, through the trees. Along the path I suddenly found an echida, crawling around and looking for bugs. It was so cute, and so close, so naturally I went climbing around to get as close as possible. It was surprising quite unafraid, and went about its business, continuing to walk straight at me until it was only a few feet away. Only on a few occasions, when I broke a branch or something, did it flatten out and raise up all of the pricklies on its back. I named him Eddie and had a blast taking his picture, until I finally left, only because Elisa was getting attacked by mosquitoes while I played. It was alright though, because further up the path there were some blackberry bushes, so Elisa enjoyed picking and eating some berries. We decided that in our traveling partnership, I was the hunter and she was the gatherer--though I only hunt cute animals to take pictures of. There were also some fun trees I found that were fun to play with; one was hallowed and burnt out, and the other was massive, burnt around the base, and looked like it had a face on it. So cool. I rode the child-size bouncy horse thing at the playground for a bit, and then we left for home. 

The rest of the afternoon was nice and relaxing .We watched tv, had a tasty dinner with her family that her mom made, and then hung out upstairs for a while. I even dragged Elisa outside to stare at the starts with me for a while, even though it was rather cold out. Then we left so I could catch the last train home at 9:30. It was a lovely train ride, and I didn't even have to pay! Late at night the ticket office at the Woodend station is closed, so usually you wait for the conductor to check tickets and just buy one from him. For whatever reason, the conductor never felt like doing his rounds, so free train ride for me. Its only 6.40, but still, I was excited. I got home near 11 and relaxed at home for the rest of the night. 

The last couple days have been nice. My classes are going well. Genetics is still boring. In animal behavior we're learned about genetically linked behaviors like nest building in mice and aggitated swimming in guppies, and in Australian wildlife we we've been learning about amphibians like the the invasive cane toad and a recently extinct frog that would swallow it's eggs, have them develop in their stomach, and then vomit up baby frogs. Figure's they're extinct, doesn't seem like a reasonable way to procreate. It was nice, there was no 3 hour lab today for my wild life class because there are some labs that are done in two groups, so you only have lab every other week. Next week we're going to the zoo though, that'll be fun. My history class is still dull and boring as ever. I entertained the idea of taking a different history course, but none of the interesting topics fit well with my schedule, and I had secretly hoped that the lecturer might have just been having an off day. 

Like last week, the weather has been dreary and drizzly most days, so I've just been hanging out downstairs with everyone after classes. Tuesday we had two false fire alarms within an hour, walking down 7 flights of stairs was loads of fun. I also finally made it up the the 12th floor last night. I'm not sure why I'd never gone up there before, but let me tell you, I've been missing out. The view was breathtaking. My views from the 7th floor are just the tops of nearbye buildings, with the slight hint of a city beyond those walls. Up there, all you can see right out to the horizon is a sea of lights splashed across the blackness. It's beautiful. It just keeps going and going too. It was honestly the first time I realized that I am living in the middle of an amazingly large city. My version of Melbourne before that was maybe 10 square blocks, and even that was hit or miss. Being able to look out and see the whole massive expansiveness of it all really made me realize where I am. The view from the kitchen, oh my god, I'd stand up there and cook all night just to look at it. It's slightly under being absolutely perfect, there's a small roof of the neighboring building blocking some of it, but for the most part it's a beautiful view of the CBD, the stretch of the giant skyscrapers with all of their alternating office lights on. It was gorgeous. 

I don't have any big plans for the rest of the week. I think there's a picnic with MUSEX in the gardens Friday afternoon. I might go to the races on Saturday, there's a big G1 race and a whole afternoon of races at the Flemington Racecourse. It's one of the oldest and most well-known track in the country and is only a 10 minute train ride from the center of the city. We'll see if I make it out of not. 

Week 4: Waterfalls and Classes

So it's been a little while since I've last written. I guess with the start of classes, compulsory writing just seems silly, but I'll give it a go for the sake of some story telling.

I suppose I'll start with the last interesting thing to happen, which would have been my weekend trip out to the country. I caught a train out to Elisa's on Friday evening and arrived just in time for some dinner. We went and ordered some Thai food, I got some beef and vegetables (and pineapple! my new favorite food in everything) stirfried with sweet and sour sauce, it was tasty. While we waited for the food we took a walk down through town to go rent some movies for the night. I picked out Salt, since I'd heard good things and didn't feel like perusing for anything else. Elisa picked out Wolf Creek, a lovely Australian horror film. I made the mistake of telling her that I wanted to go to the outback, so she decided to make me watch a movie where some nice tourist girls traveling across the country get picked up by a guy, who starts off nice and helpful and ends up torturing and killing them. Apparently it's also based on true events, as the guy that they were traveling with was able to get away, though they never found the man. Elisa, her sister Nancy, and I all had dinner and watched the two movies. I was slightly put off by Wolf Creek, complaining that now I'm not going to know if someone I meet is just trying to be nice or wants to kill me, but I'm still set on going to the outback. Besides, I'm certain I know how to shoot a gun better than the girls in the movie, so I should be fine either way.

The next day we woke up early, around 9am or so, and I hung out for a bit while Elisa finished up her morning chores. Her mom made a delicious breakfast of either eggs and bacon or french toast--I went for the french toast. After breakfast and some more cleaning, Michael, one of Elisa's guy friends who I'd met at dinner a few weeks ago in the city, joined us and we were off to Trentham to find a waterfall to play in for the afternoon. Even after a wrong turn or two, (I'm quickly catching onto Elisa's lack of direction, and to be fair the sign for the falls was quite small and obscure) it only took about a half hour or so to get there. There was a  nice little paved path for the "lookout" to the falls, and then on the other side of the small metal fence was a much smaller, narrow goat path sort of thing that led down to the base of the waterfall.

The couple that was there when we first arrived left after a few minutes so we had the place to ourselves for the next hour or so. We had some fun taking pictures and Michael and I went climbing back up under the waterfall. It wasn't an exceptionally warm day, probably in the mid 70s, but we were still determined to go for a dip. The water was absolutely freezing, to put it lightly. It wasn't even the sort of cold that slowly doesn't feel so bad after you give yourself some time to get used to it, it was more than happy to remain at pneumonia-inducing temperatues, I'm sure. After braving the cold and navigating the big pointy rocks we ended up seated under the waterfall. It was deafening, blinding, probably power-washing a few layers of skin off, but still an absolute blast. I think we only lasted 10 to 15 minutes in the water before we retreated to dry land and warm sun.

We spread some towels out on the big boulder conveniently located infront of the falls and laid out in the sun to dry off and warm up a bit. As we were occasionally misted with some icey cold waterfall water, a few more people came wandering down the path to have a look at the fall. I was slightly concerned that our sun bathing might be taking away from the scenery for these poor folks, but that was before one of the woman's presumed husband decided to strip down to his tidy-whities and go for a stroll behind the falls so she could take pictures while he posed. It was slightly disturbing, but at least it made me feel a little better about our much more socially acceptable presence. Once we were all dry, we drove back into town for lunch. Elisa and I got some rather fancy and extremely messy BLTs while Michael complained and picked at some sort of bread and dips plate.

After the drive home, the plan was to meet up with Michael and Jay on the 3 something train into the city and then head to Zack's house for the rest of the afternoon. It was a lovely plan, but it didn't quite work out. Turns out they were doing some work on the rails between Woodend and Melbourne and we could only take a bus there, but the bus wasn't leaving for another hour or so. We walked into town, hung out for a bit to kill the time, and then got on the bus. Conveniently, we didn't have to pay anything for the ride all the way into the city, but it did take a lot longer than the train. By the time we got into the city, some time after 6, I decided to just call it a night and head home instead of accompany the group to Zach's, which would have involved another 45 minute or so train ride.

From what I recall, Sunday was cold and rainy so there wasn't anything too exciting going on. Monday brought with it the much anticipated (or dreaded) start of classes. Luckily, one of the few nice things about living at unilodge is that the location is amazingly convenient. Campus is directly across the street, and even though most of my classes are on the far side of campus, it still only takes 5 minutes at most to walk to them. My first class was Genetics, which was in a normal sized lecture hall with about 300 or so kids in it. There isn't much to say on the class, the professors, or lecturers as they're called here, weren't exactly interesting and neither is the subject, but it's a requirement for my major so I'll suffer through it.

My next two classes are both of my zoology classes which are back to back in the same little lecture room. I think it's the only decent sized lecture room in the whole zoology building, so there aren't many other choices. The first class I had was my animal behavior class. From the classes I've had so far it seems like it's going to be really interesting. I haven't really studied the ecology and behavioral side of things in any of my classes at Penn State, and it's nice to see a different perspective. The lecturers are all really cool and interesting so far, and the class itself has very little work, just like all of the other classes here. There's only one main assignment, a "news and views" writing assignment that basically entails taking one of the 5 assigned scientific papers from a study and condensing the information into 1000 words or less. Other than that, you're required to peer review three papers from students in the class, and then there's one written final exam on the theory of the class and not on cramming in information. I'm sold.

The next class I had was Australian wildlife biology. The professor was a crazy little lady that ran around and spoke rather quickly, but she was entertaining. This class also seems like it's going to be really interesting. The  weekly lab, or practical as they call them, usually involve going to the zoo or other parks and gardens nearby to observe and sketch the animals and birds that we see. Our first practical this week was in a lab room filled with a collection of preserved animals, birds, lizards, snakes, etc. that we had to go around an observe, sketch, identify, and answer a few questions on. Animals and drawing, what more could I ask for?

Unfortunately, my last class of the day wasn't nearly as successful as the others. It's my history class, called colonizing Australia, and should be at least vaguely interesting . As I quickly found out though, the lecturer can easily make or break a class. This guy spent the entire hour and a half of the class bent over the desk and reading off of what sounded like an extremely long, obtuse, and generally useless essay. It wasn't even like he was giving a lecture at all, and he would only look up from time and time again to change the slide to another picture of a map or something similar and then continue on in his monotonous chanting. It was extremely painful trying to listen to him--he kept quoting random historians and primary documents but I couldn't tell when the quotes ended and when his archaic rambling began again. I think by the end of the class someone may or may not have landed on Australia, but that's more of an educated guess than anything else. Fortunately, there are only two essays that we need to write for the class, so I think I'm going to try to stick it out and just get the work done.

For the most part, the rest of the week was spent going to classes, hanging out at unilodge, or stealing wifi from the university and doing enjoyable things like watching tv or downloading music that I can't do on my limited bandwidth in my room. It's generally been overcast, drizzly, windy, and in the 60s throughout the week. I know that those complaints aren't falling on sympathetic ears for those of you in the northern hemisphere still stuck in the throes of winter, but still, it's not nice. I've heard time and time again that this summer is one of the coldest and wettest summers they've had in decades. I guess that's better than raging forest fires, but still, I wouldn't mind some sun now and then.

One highlight of the week was Wednesday night. Elisa was in the city for one of her classes and I was invited along to meet up with her and a bunch of her friends from uni. We went to the night market first, which was really fun. It's at the victoria market, which is usually home to various vendors during the days that sell vegetables, meat, etc. But once a week in the summer season they have the night market with live music, food stands selling just about anything you could ever want, and other vendors selling silk clothing, jewelry, and other odds and ends. I had bratwurst and sauerkraut for dinner washed down with sangria, the most popular drink at the market it would seem, and then spent some time looking around at all of the vendors with Elisa. After we'd had a look at anything that looked interesting we headed off into the city to go find her friends again. We met up at bar called either Highlander or All the Tired Horses, I'm not sure which, though I prefer the horse version obviously. The rest of the evening was spent dancing with everyone to a lovely ensemble of 60's music.

Thursday afternoon I met up with Elisa again after her classes for lunch. We went to a place in the city called Crossways, I think. It's a Hare Krishna run place that serves a set menu of vegetarian lunches every day of the week. Apparently all of the proceeds go towards charity and the people that work there are all volunteers. Wednesday's meal was a big helping of tofu and vegetable curry and rice, cherry havlava with custard for desert, and then all you can drink koolaid, called cordial here, for a grand total of 5 dollars. I'd never had tofu before, and wasn't exactly impressed, but otherwise it was really good food. I'll be going there more often for lunches, that's for sure. After lunch Elisa had some time to kill before her next class so we wandered around the mall at Melbourne Central.

I'm not sure what the plan is for the weekend yet, but I'll probably be headed back out to the country to do some more sightseeing with Elisa. It's always nice to be able to get out of the city.